


Nine of Eyes

by propheticdreams



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Bathhouse episode(s), Blood Magic, Body Horror, Caduceus Clay has too much on his plate, Caleb Widogast Needs a Hug, Control Issues, Dissociation, Dysphoria, Eventual Happy Ending, Gender Issues, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Implied/Referenced Torture, Literal Hell(s), Magic Tarot Cards, Memory Alteration, Molly has legitimately terrifying blood powers, Mollymauk Tealeaf Lives, Not all of it's angsty, Other, Possession, Repressed Memories, Self-Esteem Issues, The Decompose spell has consequences, The Mighty Nein have issues ok?, The Mighty Nein take care of each other, There are a bunch of pairings but nothing is resolved, Trent Ikithon is his own trigger warning, but he's not ok, circus shenanigans, me attempting to use C1 characters without having seen C1
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-02-27 06:08:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22102339
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/propheticdreams/pseuds/propheticdreams
Summary: The truth was, Molly remembered more than he would ever admit.He knew better than to talk about the whispers in the back of his head, the eyes that stared at him at night. He knew better than to acknowledge the other person who lived in his head. If he didn’t look, they couldn’t see him. As far as he was concerned, he was going to live his life as if that thrice-cursed ritual had never happened.Nonagon, however, had other ideas.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 32





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> So! This is my first fanfic on this site, and my first CritRole fanfic period - and of course, true to every fucking thing I do, I went for the most ambitious and complicated thing first. This is gonna be a biggun. I have gone deep into both CritRole and general D&D lore, and I have pulled out a behemoth of an epic. But frankly, I think Molly deserves it.
> 
> Chapter-specific trigger warnings will be in these notes, so please read them carefully.
> 
> Tarot cards feature heavily in this fic. Since Molly's tarot deck has been confirmed to be different than the standard real-life deck, and we don't really know exactly what's in it, I have taken the opportunity to make my own fictionalized deck. The Major Arcana are drawn basically from the magic tarot deck/Deck of Many Things specified in the 3.5e prestige class "Fateweaver" (which also figures in this story), but with some modifications of my own. The Minor Arcana are the same as in real life, but the names of the suits have been changed to reflect Exandrian lore. 
> 
> Anyways, enough talk. Buckle up, sit back, and enjoy the ride!

It was raining that night.

Cold rain fell in sheets from the dark clouds that covered the moon. Every droplet that hit the ground turned thick and viscous with a combination of dirt and blood. The night was dark, and no one was there to see it. But if anyone with keen eyes had been standing in the forest clearing at that moment, this is what they would have seen:

The ground was soaked in blood. Large stones had been placed in a general approximation of a circle, and in the center was a stone altar, rough, plain, and dark with thick gobbets of blood. No corpses could be seen; the blood had no immediately apparent source. Yet there it was, coating the altar and dripping down the sides like some hellish icing, splattering with every raindrop that smacked against it. 

If this nonexistent observer had peered closer, they would have seen that scattered around the ritual circle were a number of abandoned personal items. A silver necklace with a ruby pendant, shaped like a teardrop. A book with a leather cover, half-buried in the mud. A large medallion, embossed with a crown of thorns. A black boot with an iron buckle, abandoned, sagging in on itself. A rusty shovel, its wooden handle splintered. 

Next to the shovel, there was a grave. The observer who wasn’t there would never know it existed unless they knew about it beforehand. There was no marker, and the freshly disturbed ground had been slicked over by the heavy rain. There was no reason to suspect that just a foot or two under the ground lay a corpse, waiting to be reborn.

But as a black-booted foot stepped into the clearing, lightly, soundlessly, as if it had no weight at all, the shadowy figure it belonged to strode calmly to the grave, precise and sure, as if it already knew where the body was buried. 

The half-elven man (was he a man?) had a deathly pale face with pure black eyes, long black hair, and a lithe form. He was covered by a dark hooded cloak that bulged strangely in the back, as if he perhaps had a hump. His boots left no impression in the mud. 

The man with his face in shadow stood at the foot of the grave, his head cocked, waiting. What happened next, he knew, had to happen on its own. 

***

There is a flash. Someone is screaming. The dead man howls in terror and pain, the sound strange and unfamiliar - all sound is strange and unfamiliar - and something thick and bitter fills his - what? Throat? Does he have a throat? Does he have a body? - he is choking, and he cannot breathe. His mind is burning. Visions flash through his head. _The sky is rotting. The worlds are rotting. The chains are broken; the prison is empty. Hell is empty; all the devils are here. Hell is empty… empty… empty…_

His eyes flash open. The thick and bitter stuff flows into them, and it burns. He brings his hands up with an effort and scrabbles at them, drawing blood from his cheeks. He thrashes, throwing mud - for the thick and bitter stuff is mud and blood - off of him in a wave. He spits and screams, sound suddenly piercing the night as his head comes up above ground, violently, as he wriggles and worms his way out of the crushing earth like a baby being born. He is wailing like a baby being born.

Suddenly he is being touched, cradled, held. The sensation is brand new, and both terrifying and comforting. Arms are around him, and he is being pulled up - what is up? How does he know what a sky is? - and supported. His body, this heavy thing that his aching mind is trapped inside, is weak, and he cannot remember how to move. His mind is being torn apart by the memories, the knowledge, the visions. _The future, the past, and the past before past - the fire and smoke and the death of all things - the sky is dead - he is dead - everything is dead - _he is out of the ground but he still can’t breathe. He is cold, deathly cold, shivering violently as the strong arms hold him tight. Someone is speaking to him, but he cannot hear anything besides the screaming. He doesn’t realize that it’s him who is screaming.__

The touch is on his forehead now, the slender cold fingers stroking his temples. He hears something outside his own mind for the first time. _Forget, little one,_ it whispers. _Let it go. Let the pain go. Be empty, be whole, be clean. Let all of it go._

His mind resounds with the words, dampening the visions like cool water. _Make me empty... make me whole... wipe me clean... let me go._ The fire fades to embers, the screaming to a whimper. _Make me empty, make me whole, wipe me clean and let me go. Hell is empty… make me empty… empty… empty…_ And slowly, the memories fade into darkness and all that is left is a single word, burned into his mind like a scar.

“Empty…” 

Vax’ildan smiled sadly down at his charge. “Empty…” the man whispered, his red eyes open but unfocused. 

“Yes, you are,” he told him. His voice was low but warm. “But not for long, little one. Not for long.” 

“Em...pty…”

He knew that his charge would not be able to say much more for quite some time. So he shifted his arms, placing one hand under the dead man’s legs, and lifted him up like one might carry a child. His charge was dead weight. Vax had to keep his hand under his head to prevent it from lolling back uselessly. A little bit of drool made a path through the caked mud on the dead man’s face. It wasn’t pretty, but then, not much could be expected of someone who was a corpse five minutes ago. 

Vax carried his charge into the cover of the trees, took off his cloak, laid it on the ground, and settled the body on top of it, taking care not to let any part of him touch the mud. He paused, briefly remembering the crimson shroud the man had been buried in, and darted back to the grave for a moment. He pulled the red cloth from the sucking mud of the grave - which was already filling up with water - and snapped his fingers to make it clean and dry. The shroud served as a decent blanket for the barely conscious newborn. 

It didn’t take much to get a fire going. Vax’ildan himself no longer had to worry about the cold, but he knew that it was crucial to keep his charge warm while the soul finished settling into the body. He glanced over at the tear-streaked face, resting awkwardly on one horn, the red eyes staring blankly into the fire. He wondered what kind of person the new soul would become. 

***

The world was confusion. Fragments of understanding floated in the void. He could see, but the things he saw didn’t make sense. There was a light that flickered and sizzled, and it was golden and red. There was a black cloth that was soft, and a purple thing with claws that he thought somehow belonged to him. Above him there was another black cloth, but it was a thousand times bigger than the one he was lying on, and filled with glittering lights. There was a figure with dark eyes that was watching him. The feeling of being looked at was so new and so frightening that he whimpered and shut his eyes. But the moment he shut them, the darkness scared him, and he had to open them again. 

The figure moved, and a dark shadow swept across him. He flinched and whimpered, but the large feathery shadow that came out of the figure’s back did not harm him. The spattering bits of wet stopped landing on his face. He was confused. He wanted to ask a question, but did not know how. 

He tried to wiggle his fingers, and the purple clawed thing moved in response. Was that his hand? It was looking at him. Hands weren’t supposed to have eyes, were they? He did not remember seeing any hands, but dimly felt that he knew what they were like. He did not think he had ever seen a hand with an eye. But there it was, red and glistening, set in the purple skin that he was beginning to realize was _his_ skin. He flexed his fingers again, and shivered at the feeling of his new skin stretching against his bones. 

Slowly, he attempted to move his wrist next, and then his shoulder. The long, scarred purple protrusion - an arm, he realized, it was an arm - moved how he told it to move. It must really be his, then. He had an arm. Did he have a second one? He tried to move his other arm, and was surprised but pleased to feel motion in response.

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He flopped a bit, trying to move as many parts of his body as he could. He managed to make his legs twitch, and was excited to find that he had two of them. There was also another body part that twitched when he tightened the muscles in the small of his back; it was long and flexible and seemed to be able to move quite freely. He wasn’t sure of the name for that one. Arms and legs he felt sure were familiar, though he didn’t know quite how, but the other appendage seemed new. Newer than everything else, that was. 

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The first time he managed to move his head, it terrified him. The world suddenly swung to one side, obscuring the dark winged figure, and it took him several dazed seconds to realize that it was his eyes that had moved. He tried again to turn his head, and managed to put the world back where it had been. He felt a rush of relief from being able to see the winged figure again. Yet despite his terror he was curious, and he turned his head again to see what was outside of his vision. There was nothing but tall dark pillars that rustled, and more darkness. 

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He could feel that his head was oddly shaped, and parts of it scraped against the ground when he moved it. He tried to move the two protrusions on his head, but they did not seem to respond like his arms and legs. His hands were not quite coordinated enough yet for him to reach up with any degree of accuracy. He really did want to know what the things on his head were, though, and so with an effort managed to roll his whole body over, landing with his face once again in the muck. The instant of pride at his accomplishment was quickly replaced by panic as he realized he couldn’t breathe.

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Vax noticed that the newborn was beginning to stir and move. Keeping his wing over his charge, he watched as he twitched, uncoordinated and floppy, and seemed to be trying to move each part of his body. His face contorted into a look of surprise as he thumped the ground with his tail. Vax couldn’t help but stifle a laugh at his expression. He turned his head away, turned it back, and then - all of a sudden - rolled off the makeshift blanket and ended up face-down in the mud. He immediately began to struggle, seemingly unable to pull his head out of the wet sludge. Vax heard muffled screaming.

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Quick as a flash, the Champion of the Raven Queen leaped up and ran to pull the hour-old newborn out of the dirt where he had gotten stuck. He grabbed the little one’s shoulders and managed to lift him bodily up, getting splashed with mud and tail-smacked in the knee for his trouble. It was lucky he couldn’t bruise, he thought.

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With a bit of work he managed to get the terrified tiefling back onto the blanket, which was now muddy, but less so than the mud itself. He stroked his filthy lavender cheeks and murmured comfortingly. His charge reached up and pawed at his face, the look in his eyes intense but unreadable.

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Vax pulled the red burial shroud over him again, and sat a bit closer this time, still sheltering him with his wing. This was going to be one of his more difficult babysitting jobs, he reflected. 

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The dead man breathed deeply, back in the safety of his blanket sandwich. He was taken care of. Someone was there to care for him, to catch him if he fell. Someone was there who would not let him suffocate again. This knowledge settled into the depths of his chest and into the ends of his fingers and toes, and for the first time, he felt that he could relax. 

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The raw panic that had been lingering in his veins, the gnawing bewilderment that had been a part of his world for as long as he could remember - as solid as the over-blanket or the rustling pillars or the man with the wings whom he knew would take care of him from now on - was beginning at last to fade. A new feeling, light and fluttery, came over him. It seemed to lift the muscles of his face, and he felt his lips curve upwards. The motion was unexpected, but pleasant enough that he did not fight or question it. 

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He didn’t mean to close his eyes, but his eyelids were so heavy that he barely noticed when they fell shut. He didn’t know what sleep was, but he could not stop the world from falling away as he drifted into dreams filled with stars, hanging bright in empty skies.

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	2. Lost Boy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Molly's first few days of life. He hangs out with Vax, learns about the world, and falls in love for the first time - only to be immediately emotionally traumatized. 
> 
> Trigger warnings include nudity, light gore, brief description of a panic attack, and abandonment/loss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heyyy, guys! So yeah... I never claimed that this work would be updated regularly. Chapters will probably keep being uploaded pretty far apart, but when they do come, they will be this length or even longer. I hope that makes the wait worth it.
> 
> Chapter-specific trigger warnings are in the summary above; please do read them.
> 
> The song for this chapter is Come Along, by Cosmo Sheldrake.

_Ace of Bones: The Ace of Bones represents groundedness, faith, and material opportunity. It shows that a seed has been planted in your life that will bear fruit in the coming days. This is a good sign!  
_ _Associated element: Earth  
_ _Associated deity: The Matron of Ravens  
Lucky numbers: 15, 34, 3776  
-From “Desdemona Moondrop’s Pocket Guide to Tal’Doreian Tarot,” pg. 65_

The empty man awoke bathed in a strange glow.

It was undeniably odd, coming _back_ to a consciousness he had only just recently come _to_. The coming-back was much more pleasant, anyway. He could feel every inch of his new body, skin pressed against something soft, fingertips brushing against feathers. There was a new and indescribable sensation dappled across his naked skin - like light made physical. It made him feel safe, fuzzy, it was - _Warm_. The concept came to him, rising out of the void that lay at the edge of his memory. He was _warm_. The feeling was so pleasant in comparison to the wet and dirty and biting cold he had felt before that he began to cry. 

Vax had been sitting on a large boulder, one wing cradling his charge, the other folded up against his back, with his arms crossed loosely across his knees. He was looking at the sky. It had been a long time since there had been blue sky above his head. He closed his eyes, willing himself to feel the warmth of the sun on his face, silently pleading with the Raven Queen to let the wind touch his skin, just one more time. All he felt was a gentle sense of presence, which he knew well enough to know that she was smiling at him. She rarely seemed to think that his prayers deserved a verbal response; usually the most he got was a squeeze of the hand or a low hum. 

The half-elf was shaken out of his melancholy thoughts by the sound of soft sobbing from the man curled up under his wing. He looked over, momentarily surprised, to see the naked body of his charge, caked in dirt and blood, shaking with quiet tears.

Vax felt a pang of shame. Here he was, a man who had lived a life fuller than most, wallowing in his own regrets while this terrified and vulnerable newborn soul lay shaking under the light of a strange new sky. 

He reached out and laid a slender hand on his charge’s shivering back. The skin was rough and ridged with hundreds of pale scars, and his fingertips touched raw, bloody flesh where the wounds of the ritual had not had time to heal. Vax got off his boulder-seat and knelt next to the tiefling, stroking his lean but muscular back and humming a tune his mother had sung to him and Vex, once upon a time. His long-dead heart stirred with pity. _The poor little one._

The empty man felt the cold touch of clammy but gentle hands, rubbing his back, and heard a sound - like the wind, but not as mournful, far gentler than the voices that had once screamed inside his head (though they were now just a fading memory). It was lilting, slow, and utterly beautiful. He did not know what music was, but even with his soul scrubbed raw he could still recognize beauty. He felt his heart flutter inside his chest, and the corners of his lips pulled upward again. _Beautiful._ Beautiful was good. He felt once again like his chest could burst, but this was different than the trapped can’t-breathe feeling of being under the ground. This was a good hurt - the hurt of _safe_ , the pain of _happy_ , the ache of _loved_. 

Words were still beyond him, but concepts and thoughts were beginning to settle into his mind, sticking to the sides of what had previously been little more than an empty chasm. _Warm. Safe. Afraid. Beautiful. Body. Mind. Voice. Light. Cold. Mine. Happy. Awake. Breathe._ There was so much in his head now. He felt like he must know as much about the world as anyone.

The nameless man rolled over, throwing his arms and legs about and using the resulting momentum to push himself onto his back. He looked up at the face of his safe-person, his beauty-warm-giver, his, his… the thought he wanted was still missing. But he noted the dark eyes, the high cheekbones, the bone-white skin. He traced the lines and ridges of the face, trying to memorize the arrangement of the features. 

But as he gazed up at the face that looked down upon him, he slowly became aware of a great light that had not been there the last time he had been awake. Confused and curious, he moved his head to stare at the over-blanket - _sky_ , the thought came - and to his astonishment, he realized that in the time he had been unconscious, it had turned a bright _blue_.

The empty man stared openmouthed at the transformed sky. Gone was the black velvet, set with thousands of tiny, glittering lights, and constantly dripping with cold drops of wet. Instead it was a pale, lovely blue, dappled with white fluffy things that drifted lazily across it. The many small lights had seemingly coalesced into one enormous, dazzling light that made his vision go green and watery when he tried to look at it. It was bigger and brighter than anything he had ever seen; its existence seemed impossible, yet there it was. Yet another new feeling spread across his chest, making him shiver, making him feel smaller than the grains of muddy silt under his hands. _Awe._

Vax smiled down at his charge’s still-dirty, still-tearstreaked, but happy face. The newborn tiefling man’s eyes were a deep crimson as they gazed up at the sky, fanged teeth and forked tongue visible in his wide-open mouth. He seemed awestruck by everything he saw. The innocence, the sheer joy in his eyes simultaneously made Vax’s heart warm and break. However wondrous these first days might be, he knew with a heavy heart that this soul was not destined to have an easy life. There was a reason the Raven Queen had assigned him personally to this case.

“Here, little lucky one,” he whispered down at the naked tiefling. “Little Lucky.” The appellation was ironic, but he doubted his charge could even understand him at this point, so it hardly mattered what he called him. It was not his job to give him a name. 

He did, of course, know the name that this body had been called before it succumbed to madness and ruin. _Lucien_ was a name one could hardly escape, on certain planes. He had even met the man, once. Twice, technically, but only once had they spoken. Several times if you counted scrying, but he doubted you were supposed to count scrying. 

But he knew just as well that that name would not fit here. The name _Lucien_ belonged to a soul who had, gods willing, vacated this body forever. The charismatic, forceful, utterly insane half-fiend whose silver eyes glittered with mania and cruelty, whose lust for power had nearly brought the Raven Queen to ruin, whose gilded tongue had wooed the Lord of the Hells and then broken that icy heart, whose quest for immortality had led him to the embrace of something far worse than the worst of the gods, and who had finally burned away under his own fire - that man was gone. This one’s eyes, silver turned crimson by the terrible ritual that brought him into being, were empty of malice or conviction - empty of everything, save innocence, wonder, and joy. 

Vax’ildan prayed that those bloodred eyes would stay so open and kind. He knew what Lucien had unlocked, what was sealed away inside this day-old child. That man’s soul had burned away like vapor when he touched that dark presence - but the presence, older and more malevolent than darkness itself, remained behind like the taste of fine wine after the alcohol has boiled into heady steam. Somewhere beneath the wide-eyed, fresh new soul that looked back at him was something terrible - something that could consume this new soul if it was ever unlocked. It was his job to make sure that never happened.

Summoning his inner Pike, the Champion of the Raven Queen cooed motheringly at the filthy tiefling. "Look at you, little Lucky, you're getting so grown up already. Let's get you on your feet, huh?" 

The empty man batted at his friend’s face, still unable to really control his fingers. His chest shook and a twinkling, bubbling sound rose from his mouth, the first voiced sound he had yet made that was not a scream. It was strange and tickly, but it felt good, so he allowed it to happen. Already he recognized that if he went on questioning everything that was new, he would never get anywhere at all. 

The man with the dark wings unfurled them, and for the first time he could see the massive, glossy black pinions, as reflective as glass in the bright sunlight, the wingspan nearly ten feet. Gaping at the utter beauty laid out before him, he almost didn’t feel the cold pale hands grasp his shoulders and with a jolt, pull him up so that his feet dangled, toes brushing the ground. The man was making sounds with his mouth, but he couldn’t understand them.

It was a surprise when the man set him down, stretched out with his feet flat on the ground and his head up towards the sky, and let him go. He did not know what standing was. Luckily the winged man’s hands had not gone far, and caught him before he could hit the ground. 

He looked into the man’s face, eyes wide with surprise, questioning his friend’s actions but trusting his intent. “Empty…?” It was the only word he knew.

Vax’s expression was somewhere between a smile and a wince. He should have expected that his charge would not be able to walk just yet; it wasn’t exactly a surprise to realize. But at the same time he knew, with a sinking, sick feeling, that he had very little time to spend with him. His job had merely been to supervise the settling of a new soul into this cursed body, to make absolutely sure he remembered nothing, and to make sure he didn’t die in the first day or two of existence. He was running out of time before he had to return to the Raven Queen’s domain. Yet he was beginning to realize just how unequipped this helpless, mind-wiped reanimated corpse was for having to navigate the world on his own. He couldn’t stand. He couldn’t feed himself. He was no more able to survive alone in the forest than a day-old infant. And to make matters worse, the look in the tiefling’s eyes looked an awful lot like the way a child looks at its mother. 

_Oh, gods, do tieflings imprint?_

He carefully lowered his charge to the ground, and sent up a silent prayer. _My Lady, great one whom I serve, what do I do? How can I leave him like this?_

The voice that filled his head was like iron left in the sun - dark and smooth in quality, hard and resounding in tone, yet warm to the ears. _My kindhearted champion, he will not be alone. You will be watching him always, and so will I. But he must learn to stand on his own. His path will not be easy, and his life will not be long. If he is to fulfill his destiny - to save us all, may the Fates be willing - he must learn quickly, and he must rely on none but himself._

Vax was no fool. He knew that talking back to the Raven Queen was the act of a madman. But looking down into the guiltless, guileless face he had pulled from the choking earth, he responded before he had a chance to think about it. _Please, my Lady, he can’t even walk. Give me just a little more time._

There was a pregnant pause, and for a split second the half-elf thought - with a spike of cold fear - that she was angry. Then: _You have one more day. Do your best._

The former member of Vox Machina took a deep breath and looked down at the naked lavender tiefling, whose head was lolling back, a blank, oblivious grin revealing his fangs as his hands and feet hung uselessly. One day. He had one day to prepare him to survive on his own. _Alright, Vax, think. Prioritize. What's most important?_

He needed to be able to walk. He needed to be able to find food and water. He probably needed to be able to defend himself. None of these were things he would ordinarily attempt to teach someone in one day - much less all of the above. But he had to try.

The man with no name showed his surprise as he was suddenly lifted high in the air and placed on his friend's shoulders, resting in the crevice between the two enormous wings. His new mount was still making words, and though he couldn't speak himself, he attempted to imitate the rhythm, babbling happily.

With his charge settled neatly on his shoulders, Vax cautiously let go of him. Almost immediately, the tiefling began to topple backwards. He grabbed him quickly before he could tumble to the ground, and very deliberately placed the newborn's hands on his head, squeezing them to indicate how to grip on. When the scarred fingers immediately slipped from their place, he put them right back and physically bent them into a grip. After a few repeats of this, he seemed to catch on and managed to tighten his fingers around Vax’s hair. “There you go. Good job.”

The empty man was equal parts euphoric at having figured out how to use his fingers and fascinated by the silky, slippery dark hair under them. Now that he knew how to flex and grip with his hands, it didn’t take him long to be able to hold on with one hand and run his fingers through his friend’s hair with the other. As he did so, his hands began to gather the hair into strands, and, as if he had done it a thousand times, to wrap them around each other, weaving the soft black tresses into small neat, flat plaits. Before he knew what he was doing, he had expertly plaited his friend’s hair into two thick Zemnian braids. He let go of the hair and shifted his grip to the bony ridges at the base of the wings, astonished by his own actions. That was pretty, and intricate. How did he know how to do that?

He stared down at his hands, grey-brown and cracked with hints of lavender showing through the dried mud, ridged with hard white lines, and set with a deep red eye that stared impassively at him. For the first time the realization began to come to him that he was older than his mind - that this body had had an existence before he had come into it. The thought filled him with a primal horror he had only just managed to completely shake off. Distantly, wailing voices began to crowd into his mind.

Vax, having lifted the newborn onto his shoulders, was about to head off towards a shady spot away from the ritual circle when he felt the hesitant, trembling fingers in his hair. He stopped, forgetting for a moment what he was doing. The slender hands, calloused by swordsmanship and made unskilled by forgetting, began to nimbly plait his hair. The feeling was achingly familiar, and had his heart not stopped long ago, it would have skipped a beat. _Blue._ All he could see was blue. All he could feel were feathers. All he could hear was her voice, _her_ voice, calling him... calling him… 

For just an infinitesimal, infinite moment, he thought he felt his chest pulse with warmth.

He was brought back the moment by the sound of terrified, keening whimpers from above him. 

The note of panic in the tiefling's voice instantly alerted him to what was going on. _Shit._ He was remembering. He had to stop this from happening, _now,_ before something horrible was unleashed. Panic beat a drumbeat against his ribs as he rushed out of the ritual circle and the memories it carried, and dropped his charge in a writhing fetal position under the shade of a massive oak. 

The Champion of the Raven Queen murmured as soothingly as he could manage as he pushed the tiefling's bedraggled hair out of his face and placed a hand gently on his forehead.

The telepathic contact was hot and painful, as the searing inferno roiling inside the dead man's mind burned his fingers and his thoughts. He could feel the dark, raging power straining against the bonds that had been placed on it by the combination of the terrible ritual and the last-minute intervention of the Raven Queen. He could feel the trembling, terrified presence of the new soul, forced to share a body with this horrendous thing. He could feel the growing pressure on the young mind as a tidal wave of memories continued to build up, beginning to overpower the mental blocks that kept them suppressed.

Vax pressed his own consciousness into the battlefield that was his charge’s mind and made himself known, filling the fiery space with calming thoughts. _You’re safe, little one. I’m here. I won’t let it harm you. You’re safe._

He felt the newborn soul reaching towards his presence, crying out wordlessly, petrified with fear. Gently, he telepathically cradled the young consciousness, and began to force the terrible darkness back behind the mental blocks that kept it from overwhelming him. _Like this, little one. Block it out. You must never allow yourself to remember, or it will destroy you._ /p>

Bit by bit, with great effort, he showed the young soul how to suppress the memories when they threatened to overcome him. By the end of it they were both exhausted and trembling from exertion, the little one’s head resting on Vax’s shoulder, the caked mud dry and rough against his skin. 

The half-elf reached up and stroked his charge’s damp, muddy hair, doing his best to hum comfortingly. When at long last the tiefling seemed calm again, he shifted his hands to grasp the man under his armpits like a baby, and carefully pulled him to his feet. The purple skin was stretched tautly across visible ribs, the stomach concave above jutting hips. It was clear that the former occupant of this body had not treated it well. 

“Here, little Lucky,” he murmured encouragingly, holding him in a standing position like a marionette doll. “Like this. Just like this.”

The empty man relaxed into his friend’s arms. His head still ached from something he couldn’t name or think about. He had so many questions, so many things he wanted to know, so many empty spaces in his brain still waiting to be filled - and yet there was no doubt in his ragged mind that he never, ever wanted to probe that dark place again.

As he was lifted once again and placed with his feet flat on the ground and his head pointing skyward, he twisted his head backwards to look at the winged man’s dark eyes - sensing that something was wanted of him, but not knowing what. “Empty…?”

The man smiled encouragingly at him, speaking in a language he could not yet understand. He slowly removed his hands from under the empty man’s armpits, staying close in case he fell again. 

He did, of course, fall again. The moment he was let go, his knees buckled and the ground rushed up towards him. This time, as he was once again caught and lifted back up, he frowned. Why was he doing this? What was the point up being lifted up and let drop, over and over again? He made a frustrated sound. _Frustrated._ This was a new thing that he didn’t like very much. His tail whipped against the winged man’s legs, splashing mud across his loose linen trousers. 

Vax sighed. “Okay, let’s change tactics.” He set his charge on the ground. “Why don’t we try sitting up first?” He maneuvered the limp violet tiefling - still nude except for the red shroud - into an upright sitting position. “Like this.” The winged man sat down next to him and tried to convey what it meant to sit, which consisted mostly of sitting and thinking very hard about how he was _sitting_. He looked over at the tiefling, who had fallen prone, but was now watching him with furrowed brow - seemingly trying to figure out exactly what he wanted. Hesitantly, the empty man tried to move himself upward, to try and emulate the exhibited position. Bit by bit, straining his weak muscles and scraping his bruised knees, he managed to pull himself into a hunched-over sitting position. He planted his elbows on his knees and leaned on his hands, as his friend was doing. _Friend._ He liked that one. 

The empty man looked over at his friend and was excited to find him beaming with pride. “Good job, Lucky! That’s a big step.”

The tiefling giggled, waving his hands around in delight and swishing his tail across the muddy ground, getting it even dirtier than before. “Empty!” 

“All right,” Vax smiled, “let’s take the next step, shall we?” He scooted over, closer to his charge, who looked at him with wide eyes. “Like this.” The half-elf slowly, deliberately got to his feet, maintaining eye contact with his charge. Once standing, he smiled encouragingly, and spontaneously did a little dance. “See?”

The empty man’s mouth fell open. Amazement colored his expression. Could _he_ do that? Could he even try? He began, fumblingly, to struggle upward.

It took hours for the bruised, bloodied, day-old tiefling to finally be able to stand upright and totter a few steps. By that point, Vax was physically and emotionally exhausted - but seeing the giddy grin and sparkling eyes on his charge’s face was more than worth it. The empty man stumbled towards him like an overgrown toddler (seeing a body that was so clearly a warrior’s move in this halting way was _weird_ ) and clumsily put his scarred arms around him. “Empty!” he cried joyously, his tail twitching in the air, his heart bubbling over with happiness. “Empty!” Another new concept settled into his bare mind: _Thank you._

Vax’s cold, bone-pale cheeks turned just the slightest shade of pink as the lilac tiefling (who was, by the way, still stark naked) hugged him tightly around the middle, the crimson shroud that had been just _barely_ preserving his modesty forgotten on the ground. He’d been doing his absolute best not to pay attention to anything south of his charge’s bellybutton, and the half-elf deliberately looked skyward. He patted the blood hunter gingerly and carefully eased out of his grip. “There you go, Lucky. You’re doing so well.” His cloak was spattered with slightly purple-toned blood and he was deeply uncomfortable, but he forced a smile for the little one’s sake. _Lucien would be humiliated,_ he thought suddenly, and pushed the thought out of his head. Lucien no longer existed; it was unfair to the newborn soul inhabiting his body to compare the two. 

Vax’s increasingly awkward thoughts were interrupted by a low, rumbling growl emanating from his charge’s stomach. Lucky looked down with a start, eyes wide, and fell on his ass. Unperturbed by the sudden change in position, the tiefling placed his hands on his stomach and jumped as it rumbled again, tail swishing in agitation. He looked up at his friend, red eyes wide in bewilderment. “Empty…?”

The dark-haired rogue chuckled despite himself. Whatever his past, whatever his future, the lavender tiefling was undeniably adorable. He sat down next to him, under the shade of the oak tree, whose leaves were rustling softly in the breeze, and leaned comfortably back. “You’re just hungry, Lucky. It’s okay, I’ve got food for you.” He reached into his small travel pack and pulled out a loaf of bread, a piece of tropical fruit, and a wineskin. He handed Lucky (oh dear, he was really starting to get attached to that name) a piece of bread and began peeling the fruit with his dagger.

Lucky slowly took the strange chunk of golden brown stuff in his hands. He stared at it. It looked like a mushed-up version of some of the plants that stuck up out of the ground, but it was soft and white on the inside and crispy brown on the outside, and looking at it made his belly move and growl even more uncomfortably. He looked at the winged man, but he seemed preoccupied using some kind of shiny tooth to cut apart a strange pink-and-green sac. _Being alive is very strange,_ he thought. _I wonder if I’ll ever get used to it._

Carefully, he brought the stuff up to his nose and sniffed it. The resulting sensation made his eyes - all nine of them, plus the two in his head - go wide as saucers. It was _good_ , and it made him _want_ in a way he couldn’t quite decipher. His mouth was filling with water and his stomach was doing agitated flips. He couldn’t fathom what he was supposed to do to stop this ache in his belly, this sudden _desire_. The want was overwhelmingly strong - it was making him crazy that he couldn’t figure out how to satisfy it. 

He licked his lips instinctively, forked tongue darting across his parched violet skin. He swallowed the soft water that was dripping out of his mouth and stared at the indecipherable mystery in his hands. His stomach made a loud, angry sound, and he whined in distress, tail whipping back and forth. What was he supposed to _do?_

Vax looked up at the unhappy sound to find his charge staring at the bread in apparent despair. The tiefling swallowed a strand of drool that was making its way towards his chin, pressed the bread to his nose and sniffed deeply. Beating his tail against the ground as if trying to figure out a difficult puzzle, he attempted to shove the bread into his bellybutton. When this perfectly logical plan failed, he made a frustrated sound and continued staring at the food in his hands as if his very gaze would cow it into submission.

The Champion of the Raven Queen clamped both hands over his mouth - dropping the dagger - and attempted to stifle the laughter that was bubbling up in his chest. The sight of this scarred, fanged, grown-ass tiefling trying to figure out how food worked was simply too much. He made an undignified snort and threw his head back, flapping his wings in time with his shaking chest. 

Lucky looked up, surprised. His friend was doubled over, making the happy-sound with great gusto. His eyebrows knit together. The winged man was happy, and he felt sure that should make him happy. Instead, however, he had an awful feeling in his gut. He looked down and hunched his shoulders, and his face began to get uncomfortably hot. He did not like this new feeling _at all._

Vax managed to calm his laughter and immediately felt bad when he saw Lucky staring at the ground. The look of shame on his face immediately stopped the last of the giggles in his throat. “Oh…” He moved up onto his heels, using his wings to stabilize himself, and sidled up to the man he was beginning to get all too attached to. “It’s okay, Lucky. I’m sorry for laughing. Let me show you.” He tugged the piece of bread gently out of the tiefling’s loose grip and took a small bite, making sure to leave plenty for the one who actually needed to eat. Opening his mouth to show the day-old blood hunter what he was doing, he chewed and swallowed exaggeratedly. “Like this,” he managed around the bread. 

Lucky’s filthy, gaunt lavender face went from upset to excited. His crimson eyes sparkled, and even the third bloodred eye that stared out from his cheek seemed to crinkle. Of _course_ it went in his mouth. That explained the water that was dripping down his chin. He grabbed the bread away from the winged man (surprising Vax with unexpected strength) and crammed the whole thing into his face. His eyes closed and he made a sound of pleasure that was uncomfortably close to a moan as the wonderful taste of fresh bread hit his taste buds. 

It took him a few tries to move from bread-in-mouth to bread-in-belly. Vax got bits of soggy choked-up bread on his cloak and feathers, but managed without major mishap to teach the tiefling to feed himself. The lavender-skinned newborn quickly scarfed down the chunk of bread he had been handed and reached out for the rest of the loaf. 

Vax snapped his fingers in front of Lucky’s face and frowned sternly. _“No.”_ He had only brought one loaf of bread and a few pieces of fruit for his charge, and he would need the rest of it to survive on his own until he could find food for himself. Besides, looking at the tiefling’s emaciated, distended stomach, he would guess that much more food probably wouldn’t even stay down. “No more,” he repeated.

Lucky’s expression was heartbroken. Tears welled up in his eyes. “Empty…?” 

Vax avoided making eye contact - the sheer look of devastation on the newborn’s face was making him feel guilty. Instead, he handed him the single fruit he had peeled and chopped up with his dagger. “Here, you can have this instead. No more bread,” he added, and put the rest of the food back in the pouch. 

Lucky ate the fruit quietly, tears streaming down his face. He had never been reprimanded before, and it seemed to him that the world which was free and easy a moment ago had snapped shut like the jaws of a beast. Nonetheless, the fruit was sweet and tart and perfect, and juice ran down his chin, and under the warmth of the sun and his friend’s smiling face, he began to relax again until he was grinning and happy and full of food. He looked up at the winged man who was still leaning against the tall rustling pillar, his face beaming, and put his hands out towards him. “Empty!”

The half-elf, solid black eyes warming a little in the sunlight, reached out and took Lucky’s hands. He couldn’t help the loving smile on his face, couldn’t help pretending that maybe, just maybe, he was going to stay. He should have left hours ago. He should have disappeared before he fell head over heels for this sweet, life-loving person. But fallen he had, and though he knew he only had a few hours left with his charge, he couldn’t help imagining what it would be like if this moment could last forever.

They spent the rest of the afternoon dozing, the red cloth wrapped and tied tightly around Lucky’s lower half so that it wasn’t too uncomfortable to have him sleeping with his head in Vax’s lap. Occasionally a bird would go by, or a small animal would explore the blood-spattered clearing, and the tiefling would jump up to investigate the brand new sight. Once a leaf fell from the oak tree and landed on his nose, and he held it with wondering eyes as though it were the most precious thing in the world - so much so that when he got bored of it, the rogue surreptitiously slipped the leaf into the bag he had packed for his charge. He had an inkling that a token of this day might be very comforting somewhere down the line. The half-elf hummed and sang lullabies, and braided flowers into the tiefling’s soft, wavy Tyrian-purple hair. It was a moment of bliss that made his dead heart ache with the knowledge of how fleeting it would be.

As afternoon slipped into evening, and the sun curved towards the horizon, Vax watched Lucky’s shadow get longer and longer. His charge had fallen fast asleep in his arms and was snoring gently. He seemed so terribly, painfully peaceful, with no idea of what had to happen next. The sun slinked towards nightfall, and Lucky’s shadow inched closer and closer to the awful stone altar from which he had come. Once his shadow touched that altar, it was time to go. _By the name of my Lady, I don’t want to go._

Though dread was mounting in the pit of his stomach, the Champion of the Raven Queen sat quietly and stroked his charge’s hair, tracing the ridges and chipped divots in his curling ram’s horns. There were places where the bone had shattered and left holes, where one could see the smooth inside of the hollow horns. He could see that the ritual that had incinerated Lucien’s soul had not left his body unmarked: his chest had been torn open, exposing a sliver of beating heart, and deep wounds had split his skin down the arms, legs, and back. _It must be terribly painful,_ he thought, and it only made him feel worse to know that Lucky had not appeared to notice the pain - most likely because he had never been without it. Vax hummed a quiet tune, fingers tangled in the dirty hair, and listened to the newborn’s breathing. Despite the aching knowledge that he would soon have to break the little one’s heart, he felt almost peaceful in this moment.

As the penumbra of Lucky’s shadow crested across the stone altar, Vax’ildan carefully disentangled himself from the long violet limbs of his charge. He stood and dusted off his simple tunic, adjusted his symbol of the Raven Queen, and folded his wings neatly against his back. He tried not to pay attention to the stirring body behind him. He tried not to think about Lucky’s questioning eyes.

“Empty?” Lucky asked, blinking the sleep from his eyes. His friend had gotten up and was not looking at him. Was something wrong? He rolled over and clumsily clambered to his feet. “Empty!”

Vax’ildan turned, trying to quell the tears in his eyes. Lucky stopped walking, eyebrows knitting at the grief on his face. “Empty…?”

“Stay here, Lucky,” Vax told him, resolutely refusing to let his voice quaver. “Stay here.” He held up a hand to get the point across.

Lucky, confused, reluctantly obeyed. He tucked his hands behind his back, twisting his fingers with worry. "Empty…" He wanted to come too. Whatever his friend was going, he was sure he needed to come too. He needed to be with his safe-person. How could he sit here and wait, all alone in the grove where he had spent his entire life?

There were wet drops slipping down his friend's face now. What was wrong? What had he done wrong? Lucky's heart beat painfully in his chest. What was happening?

The half-elf forced himself to smile, sadly, comfortingly, under his brimming eyes. "I know you don't understand," he whispered, looking intently at his charge. "I know this will hurt you terribly. But someday, when you're all grown up, I want you to look back on this day and know that I really did care for you." He raised his pale hands to his chest and formed a heart. "I love you, Lucky. I really do. Despite everything, Lucky, I love you." 

Lucky smiled vaguely, still bewildered. He did not understand the words, but he could understand the sentiment. The love and comfort radiating from the winged man made him afraid in a way he could not decipher. What was happening? What was happening?

The winged man once again began to walk away. Lucky took a step after him, then - haltingly - stopped. He was told to stay. His friend was coming back. He was just going for a walk… he would be back. His friend would never _leave_ him - it was simply impossible. It was impossible for them to be separated. They were bound together, by the warm bonds of sunlight and the smell of grass. They would be all right. Right?

Warm amber rays touched his back, and he spun around, momentarily distracted. The massive light in the sky which had so struck him, the awe-inspiring ball of fire which had kept him warm, had _moved in the sky_. It had moved down… and down… he had not noticed its slow descent before, but now it was touching the horizon and had turned an angry bleeding red that froze his heart cold. A painful throbbing beat in his chest, and he recognized the hot-cold claws of fear. That blazing red reminded him horribly of eyes, nameless watching terrors he was not supposed to think about. Wordless, many-tongued screams built in the back of his mind, and he instinctively quashed them.

He looked down, and saw that darkness was gathering under him. The rustling pillars - _trees,_ the word came - were dripping onto the ground with inky shadows that seemed to reach much farther than an hour before. The sky was red and orange, then purple and deep blue. It was getting darker. 

Fear turned to panic. “Empty!” he cried out, tail thrashing, the veins all over his body suddenly noticeable under his skin as blood pumped through them at the speed of a falling star. What was _happening?_ He turned back to his friend.

Only rustling shadows greeted his frightened gaze.

Lucky was only a day old, and he had already experienced fear and pain on a level most newborns could not imagine. But this, this soul-shattering stab of betrayal, was beyond what he was capable of weathering. It wasn’t possible. It wasn’t possible. It wasnt possible psbile possbile no non onon on no empty empty emntyp no no pleas plese no why how no empty empty empty empty empty empty eMPTY NO NO

The scream that tore itself from his throat was one of desperation. “EMPTY!” he howled into the silent night, hoping beyond hope that the winged man would reappear, would hear him, would _save_ him - _help me - save me - please don’t be gone._  
Moments bled into each other. He was shouting at the top of his lungs - he was running blindly into the trees - he was digging in the ground, as if his friend would be just under the surface waiting to be found - his face was wet and he was sobbing as if his heart would shatter. Finally he found himself on his knees, back under the tall oak which had been so beautiful not an hour before. Now it held nothing for him but fear and grief, and its once-sheltering branches seemed to have turned to clawing fingers in the night. He curled up in the fetal position, tears drenching his filthy face and watering the soil beneath him. 

He reached out, blindly, with the instinct of a wounded child, as if searching for the warmth of a mother who wasn’t there. His fingers brushed something soft - the red cloth he had been swaddled in. He pulled it closer to him, hugged it for comfort. It was nothing, only a scrap of fabric, but it was everything he had. He would never let it go again.

It was there, in the grove where he had been born, under the shadow of the oak tree, that Lucky finally ran out of tears. From high above, Vax watched and wept, but his charge never knew it. Instead, exhausted beyond belief, he fell asleep for the second time in his life.


End file.
